Parents are often in a battle to control the information provided to their children. Adult content is available through virtually all media outlets, with television and the Internet being the largest culprits. Since parents are unable to constantly be with their children and monitor everything that is being viewed by their children, there is a need for a way for parents to remotely monitor the media content being presented to their children. However, certain measures currently being taken by copyright owners to protect high quality media content will make it virtually impossible for parents to remotely monitor protected media content.
Copyright owners are in a constant battle against piracy of their media content. In the current digital world, high quality copies of digital content can be readily made and distributed without permission of the copyright owners. With the increasing availability of high definition video content and no or low compression audio content, the need to prevent unauthorized copies of audio and video content is greater than ever. In response to these needs, various digital rights management (DRM) techniques have evolved. DRM is a broad term that is used for various techniques used by copyright owners and authorized publishers to control access to and restrict use of media content on associated electronic devices.
High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is a form of DRM that was developed by Intel Corporation and is widely used to control the delivery of audio and video media content from one electronic device to another. For HDCP, a source device is able to restrict the playback quality of otherwise high definition media content to DVD (Digital Video Disk) quality, or standard definition, when a destination device does not have an HDCP compliant media interface. Two common HDCP compliant media interfaces include the HDCP compliant High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) and the HDCP compliant Digital Video Interface (DVI). When the destination device does have an HDCP compliant media interface, the high definition media content is generally encrypted by the source device and delivered to the destination device in a secure fashion.
For HDCP, the media interfaces of the respective source and destination devices are able to communicate with each other and play pivotal roles to ensure that the media content is protected. The media interface of the source device will authenticate the media interface of the destination device, and the respective media interfaces will exchange any encryption information to facilitate encryption of the media content by the media interface of the source device and decryption of the encrypted media content by the media interface of the destination device. Notably, this functionality is generally provided in the hardware at the media interfaces and not in the higher level control systems of the respective electronic devices. Other DRM techniques, such as the Advanced Access Content System (AACS), operate in a similar fashion.
The media content that is generally protected by DRM restrictions is high quality media content, such as high definition video and high quality audio, which has little or no compression and is provided at high resolutions. For example, high definition video is lightly compressed and supports resolutions up to 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels or higher, as compared with standard definition video that is 720 pixels by 480 pixels or lower. Notably, high quality media content is generally the only restricted content wherein playback of reduced quality content is generally not restricted.
As such, the high quality media content that is subject to the DRM restrictions is securely passed from one compliant interface at the source device to another compliant interface at the destination device. The DRM restrictions generally prevent access to the high quality media content outside of the source and destination devices, and prevent the high quality media content from being delivered to or from a non-compliant interface of any type of device. Accordingly, the high quality media content that is presented to a destination device, such as display device, cannot be delivered to another device for monitoring, unless the monitoring device has a compliant media interface. In reality, many devices that could be used for remote monitoring will not have a compliant media interface or otherwise be able to comply with the DRM restrictions associated with the high quality video content. Further, the ability to transfer high quality media content to remote devices, especially over a packet-based network, where likely monitoring devices will reside, is generally bandwidth limited.
Accordingly, there is a need for a technique to remotely monitor media content that is being delivered to a destination device, such as a display device. There is a further need for a technique to remotely monitor such media content when the media content is high quality media content that is associated with DRM restrictions. There is yet a further need to remotely monitor such media content over a packet-based network, such as a local area network or wide area network, like the Internet.